How would our lives change if we approached every experience with the intention of listening first? In this noisy, distracting world, it is difficult to truly hear. People talk past each other, eager to be heard but somehow deaf to what is being said. Listening is an essential skill for healthy relationships, both with God and with other people. But it is more than that: listening is a way of life. Adam McHugh places listening at the heart of our spirituality, our relationships and our mission in the world. God himself is the God who hears, and we too can learn to hear what God may be saying through creation, through Scripture, through people. By cultivating a posture of listening, we become more attentive and engaged with those around us. Listening shapes us and equips us to be more attuned to people in pain and more able to minister to those in distress. Our lives are qualitatively different―indeed, better―when we become listeners. Heed the call to the listening life, and hear what God is doing in you and the world.

More than six years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans are still trying to craft a workable plan to repeal and replace it. The latest attempt was unveiled in May by Rep. Pete Sessions from Texas and Sen. Bill Cassidy from Louisiana. It would provide every American adult with $2,500 to buy health insurance while abandoning Obamacare’s top-down, regulation-driven approach.

As a Republican who believes that Obamacare has not fixed longstanding national healthcare issues, and as a healthcare professional who believes that real reform is one of the most important issues in politics, I support the underlying principles of the Sessions-Cassidy plan. I want reforms that empower patients with greater choice, protect the doctor-patient relationship, decrease costs and increase quality.

Don't expect your doctor to stand up and protest about how the Affordable Care Act is responsible for so many of the health care problems that patients face today.As a physician and a dentist in private practice, we have spent the past five years making the case that the ACA is harming our patients. While we get many varied and complex questions from them, the one question always asked is a simple one, but one with a more complex answer: "Why aren't more doctors speaking out?"The primary reason is fear. Doctors are afraid of their new bosses bureaucrats and their corporate employers whom the ACA empowered.Thanks to the ACA, many physicians who have practiced as small employers have been forced to leave private practice to become corporate employees (a number that now represents more than 50% of all physicians). For physicians in this position, public advocacy against the ACA could be in violation of employment contracts or could be a source for dismissal.